Monday, January 17: Six

When God created the heavens and the earth, it was on the final day that He created Adam. Consequently, that sixth day carries the significance of man, and throughout the Bible, the symbolism of six being the number of man continues. Whether or not we are six feet under or one beer short of a six-pack, man has demonstrated that without God, all of us are incomplete and have no chance of perfection.


Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Genesis 1:31


Even with our lack of perfection, God is not disappointed in His creation. God commented on all of His other creative days saying that they were good, but after creating man, His comment was that it was “very good.” God created us without sin, but Adam brought imperfection upon us all with his choice to disobey the Lord. After Adam, sin is pervasive in all mankind, but there is none that highlights man’s hatred against his brother more than murder. As God gives life to us all, when one man takes that gift away from another, it demonstrates a complete disregard for God, God’s laws and others. When God gave His laws to Moses on Mount Sinai, it was not accidental that the law against murder was number six on the list.


8 Now Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.
9 Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?”
He said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”
10 And He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground. 11 So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.
Genesis 4:8-11


That first murder was so heinous that Abel’s blood cried out to the Lord. Even though Cain was aware of God’s omniscience, he lied in a weak attempt to cover his sin. Perhaps the most interesting representation of six being the number of man occurs in reference to the man indwelt by Satan in the tribulation:


Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666.
Revelation 13:18

Many Bible prophecy aficionados have attempted to apply this numerical equivalent to world leaders with different political views than their own. Hence Ronald Wilson Reagan was thought by some to be the coming world leader representative of Satan based on six letters in each of his three names. Hollywood attempted to solve this in its own way, by giving a child a birthmark with three sixes in the movie, “The Omen.” Presently, how this number might apply does not make much sense to us, but for Christians alive in the tribulation, it could make perfect sense. Mathematicians have tried to “solve this equation,” and some have pointed out that Roman numerals carry an interesting property along these lines. Where I=1, V=5, X=10, L=50, C=100 and D=500, totaling those numbers comes to 666.


Just as God operates in the triunity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the beast is associated with Satan, the antichrist and the false prophet. All Biblical representations of the antichrist, whether historical or prophetic, follow with the symbolism of six standing for man. Goliath, an avowed enemy of God and God’s people, was six cubits in height, carried six pieces of armor including an iron spear that was 600 shekels in weight (1 Samuel 17:4-7). Revelation 19:17-18 speaks of the “supper of the great God,” when the carnivorous birds of the air eat the flesh of those killed in Armageddon. We see a similar occurrence after David slays Goliath:


46 This day the LORD will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you and take your head from you. And this day I will give the carcasses of the camp of the Philistines to the birds of the air and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.
1 Samuel 17:46-47


In Revelation, the antichrist creates an image of himself and places it in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. In the same manner, Nebuchadnezzar created a statue of himself that was 60 cubits high and 6 cubits wide, in Daniel 3:1.


Man is a sinner and with God, is capable of having that sin removed. There is only one God, and mathematically speaking, 6 + 1 = 7. Take man’s sin and add God and perfection occurs. God will perfect us. Sadly, many people seem to grade their own behavior on an abacus, with good deeds counted in the black and sins counted in the red. On that grading scale, a good person is one who has more good deeds than bad deeds. Unfortunately, God is the one doing the judging, and He has told us that one sin makes a man a sinner. Without a Savior, punished for our sins, it does not matter how many good deeds are on your abacus! If you have not accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, that event could remedy your great sin debt. If you have accepted Him, the removal and atonement of your sin should bring great joy!


For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23